its fun to read about Hepcats but seems based on looking at pages/panels like i could get a same-but-better experience by alternating modern indie furry comics with Dykes To Watch Out For
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the introduction to spawn for me and my friends was the series one action figures (with cutdown versions of comic issues in the packaging!) turning up on sale in a discount supermarket for £2 each. we’d never heard of any of these characters, but they looked cool and we were kids who liked superheroes and action figures.
early image was definitely a big influence on the comics i made as a kid. things that only made snese in the 90s, like top secret evil mafia scientists and so on.
i recently watched some of the spawn tv cartoon, and it’s not as good as the maxx, but it’s definitely watchable. i look forward to watching both those shows on sweltering hot summer nights, seems like the best time for that kind of thing.
did anyone else ever see the todd mcfarlane kiss comic where all the members of kiss were giant cosmic gods looking on in solemn judgement while un-kisslike violent serial killer nu metal-type things happened on earth? i found a couple of issues in a bargain box in my teens
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The introductions to Antarctic Press’ Hepcats reprints are like a text version of Overnight except the dude didn’t have 1/10 the success of Boondock Saints. I really recommend them to anyone who has any familiarity with the American comics industry and can somehow still find joy in a dumb white dude concocting one excuse after another for all his failures. Limited audience, I know!!
when u write a long ass letter from the editor tearing into fans & critics who mock u for constantly blowing deadlines, then sign off with an apology for failing to ship a fuckin’ reprint of a 5+ year old comic…that’s when u earn my love…
Yes, same. Those comics made no sense and were much, much worse than everything I loved prior but seeing these dopes have some kind of success outside The Establishment was exciting and inspiring even though none of them ended up practicing what they preached*.
Sim held a lot of the same appeal but with the added benefit of being a guy who, like, read books that weren’t drawn by Michael Golden. Seemingly very rich and successful, with absolute creative freedom, chasing and achieving a goal most people said was impossible. But in the end, eh. We know how it all turned out. I used to roll my eyes at Groth’s criticisms of Sim’s self-publishing evangelism but now that I’m older I feel differently. I’m writing too much so I’m not gonna go into it but man, I feel differently.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Kitroebuck’s post, which was pretty close to my Cerebus experience. For a long time I was like whatever, I can separate art from artist, especially when it’s so easy to ignore the text pieces, and I can point at all the positive lessons I drew from it, but now I dunno. I read Reads when I was very young, very ill, and recovering from the most traumatic experience of my life. That shit flipped a switch, that shit was not good for me, and I think it was many years before I purged that poison from my system. I don’t know if I regret reading it so much as I wish I’d had, I dunno, some kind of positive adult influence in my life. Some kind of mentor. Instead I read the Guide to Self Publishing over and over and thought I could take on the world all by myself and well I got sicker and sicker and lonelier and lonelier and it ain’t that dude’s fault but man, whatta crock of shit all that was.
(The Guide to Self Publishing does have a lot of good advice, I learned a lot from it, everyone should learn to use an Ames lettering guide even though I’m not sure they make them anymore! But it also reinforced and encouraged a lot of my bad habits and negative thinking. So I’m glad kids today can just get craft tips from tumblr or youtube or whatever, kids today can draw pretty good.)
Anyway I sold off my Cerebus books a few years back, got a nice amount of money for them, never thought I’d ever say goodbye to those but I just got sick of seeing them on my shelf, got sick of being reminded of what that dude’s doing nowadays, got sick of having such a big reminder of the person I used to be within eyesight, that shit was bad for me, glad I learned you can take the world’s dumbest fucking idea and devote years of your life to it and possibly find an audience though, thanks for that. I think.
Signed,
Guy who still has boxed McFarlane KISS toys sitting in his closet, what the fuck was wrong with me, fuck
*OK maybe Larsen didn’t setup his own li’l fiefdom? He just did Savage Dragon for the most part right.
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I think he was at least writing Freak Force and SuperPatriot, but he didn’t go as hard as Extreme or Wildstorm with all the up and coming dudes doing all the work.
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They do still make Ames lettering guides! I actually bought one year before last. They’re pretty affordable too.
But yeah Larsen saw everyone else get pulled in every different direction doing merchandizing and cartoons and setting up their own studios and whatnot that he decided early on he was going to stick to just doing his book which was the whole reason he went to Image to begin with (though he did do like one season of a Dragon cartoon and a line of PlayMates toys).
And Savage Dragon is still a pretty fun book. I fell off 20 years ago but touched base with it after issue 50 then 100 and most recently with 250 and the coolest part about it is it takes place in real time. So each month in the book a month has passed in the story. This means the main character isn’t even the original Dragon but now his adult son (who has kids of his own) and it’s wild that there is this one long running comic book with a single continuity with characters who age and die and stuff. I think the original Dragon is actually dead now or lost in another dimension or something (I’m sure he’ll come back somehow for issue 300 though).
You just don’t see that kind of thing in mainstream comic books anymore. Like Spider-man stopped aging in the ‘80s where before he started out in high school then went to college and got a job and got married but they kept resetting the canon so you never saw him get old. The downside is nothing ever happens or changes but at least I guess you’re never lost for what’s going on in any particular story.
I want to read the full run of Savage Dragon. I’ve only read through the first 60 or 70 issues though. I stopped trying to buy the physical book because the print runs are so low they go quick and then are impossible to find.
The thing I don’t really like about it though is how much effort he takes to onboard a hypothetical new reader and catch them up with the story so far. Sometimes it’s like the first half of the book is just characters and backstory dumps telling you what’s happened up to now. Just tell the story dude! I’m here for the ride and if I want to know what’s going on I’ll just read the back issues I missed to fill in the gaps.
But I think we can all agree: Erik Larsen is way better than Sim or McFarlane.
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Melmoth is amazing on its own but just the idea that Dave Sim’s solution to havinng a bit of writers block in the middle of his 28 year long epic serial was to put in a 450 page meditation on the death of Oscar Wilde as a sort of filler side story makes it even more mind blowing. Just the whole context of Cerebus is amazing, like some runs of the individual issues maintain the page numbering continuity of Cerebus as a whole so you open it up annd at the bottom you can see that this issue is starting on page 396 of the collected volume of Cerebus. It’s legit great.
Also, if you ever can find videos of him he does voices really nice. It’s wild to see him do them.
And final Dave Sim note is that while his writing shows a lot of wild sexism during the Reads volume, in person he’s never been less than kind to any women or girls who were present at a signing or in store meet n greet or anything like that.
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I remember the book. It was called Kiss: Psycho Circus. I never read it because it just seemed so ridiculous which is saying something because all th McFarlane shit was ridiculous. Like I was taking Spawn seriously but not Kiss? I must have been high.
But maybe it was more that Spawn looks cool to me in a way that Kiss never would. Even today my tastes are still such that I don’t mind so much if a story in a comic doesn’t make much sense or isn’t told that well as long as the characters look cool and the art work is fun to look at. That is really a fitting legacy for Image that idea that Cool is King. Does it make sense? Who cares as long as it’s cool looking.
The Spawn cartoon was fun though you’re right it holds no candle to Maxx. That said I’d watch another one if they made it.
I also have good memories of drawing and reading comics on hot summer nights with the window open and a slight breeze rolling in. That’s the only right way to do it in my book.
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One of my friends was buying Psycho Circus when it came out and I remember reading his copies and being surprised that it seemed better than I expected.
If I recall correctly it had zero to do with Kiss as a band, and it was more about these circus themed god characters who happened to have the same make up.
And of course there’s a FPS from the Blood devs too.
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Blood was made by Monolith Productions. KI𐌔𐌔: Psycho Circus - The Nightmare Child was made by Third Law Interactive ( KISS: Psycho Circus - The Nightmare Child credits (Windows, 2000) - MobyGames ), after Monolith’s release of Blood 2, using Monolith’s then-current Lithtech 1.5 engine ( Kiss: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child - Wikipedia ).
Kiss: Psycho Circus was the first game to be developed by Third Law Interactive, themselves having recently formed in December 1998 after a widely publicized mass walkout from Ion Storm
The game was exhibited during E3 1999 at Gathering of Developers’ booth across the street from the event; alongside booth babes and live music, dwarves dressed as members of Kiss promoted the game.
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Ok! The Blood 2 engine had me confused!
There’s a distinct chance that this was the band Mini Kiss
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given the time frame, they should also have got the wcw kiss demon
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This game is unbelievably bad btw. Well worth experiencing if you like to play rightfully forgotten fps games
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By means of a typo I just discovered that Captain America is somehow much more entertaining if you call him Captain American. : D
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Been reading Manga in Theory and Practice by Hirohiko Araki. It’s a great little book that distils why stories generally work by various principles to engage and sustain interest via manga as a lens. What’s hilarious about the book is when Araki tries to retroactively apply some of these principles to his previous work and appears to misunderstand its appeal.
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ah yes, normalcy
the quality definitely inherent in any character araki has ever drawn
(another recommendation on this subject is “even a monkey can draw manga” by koji aihara and kentaro takekuma. it’s satirical, and was originally published in 1990, so its commentary on trends in manga is decades out of date, but it’s still very interesting and informative)
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araki is one of the few artists whose works i habitually consume that i’d genuinely love to hang out with just to discover how much of a guileless rube he really is
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my copy of The Eltingville Club finally arrived, or was found by the staff. The person at the counter noted that it was outside what the regular clientele of the comic shop seems to order.
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I haven’t read the frog book yet, but Stages of Rot is very good. There are maybe 50 words total, but I really like the setting and creatures and things. The art style is perfect.
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New PBF for @Broco
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